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Psalm 13
Good morning, church. It is my pleasure to be able to open up the Scriptures with you and dive in this morning to Psalm 13. My way of introduction as you're turning your Bibles there this morning, I want you to begin to think about the trials and tribulations of your life, the afflictions that, if you will, God's given you.
I want you to think about the ways in which you struggle, the loneliness, the defeat, the heartache, the physical ache, all of it. I want you to think about all of that this morning as we open up the Scriptures.
And I want to, as you begin to think about these things, I want you to think about maybe the bitterness that has set in or the discontentment that has creeped in as well, feelings of disbelief in your own circumstances, frustration when affliction has met you head on, when there's not been a single way around what you've been faced with that you just have to keep on trudging.
What we're speaking of could be anything that God has purposed in your life that's afflicted you. It might be your own personal health. It might be the health of a family member, the death of someone close.
We can name 100 things that would apply this morning to each one of us in this room. But I digress. All of you here this morning have met some form of affliction. So you know what I'm speaking of. When this affliction met you, was it hard?
Was it fun? Was it easy? Was it welcome? Did you see it and smile? Surely not. Did you enjoy? Did you bask in its presence and enjoy the refining fire, as it were, as if you were roasting s'mores? Surely no.
I'm going to go out on the sturdiest limb on the tree and say that you were tired, that you were sick of it, that you loathed every second of it, that it caused you to run to your creator, that maybe eventually you grew impatient, that eventually you maybe began to wonder, is this forever?
Will it always be this way? Why hasn't God done something? What is happening? And so on and so forth. These feelings, these things that we're talking about right now, these emotions that we're discussing at the outset of the sermon are nearly the exact words that we find in the first two verses of our psalm this morning, spoken by David.
If you've yet to open your Bibles, open them to Psalm 13. That's where we'll be spending our time together this morning. But before we stand together corporately and read our passage, allow me a moment to pray for our time together.
Please bow your heads with me. Heavenly Father, triune God of the Bible, this morning I ask you to help us focus. Father, help us glean. Help us see Christ in these words this morning. Help us adhere to the Spirit's helping conform us to these words and what they mean for our life.
God, I pray that we block all of the things out that are running rampant in our minds this morning to focus on your word. Focus on your preached word. God, I pray that you help me vanish in this sermon.
I pray that your Holy Spirit would use this to edify saints. And for those who are yet to be saints, would see their affliction as this product of sin and know that they can only run to one place, which is the cross.
God, I thank you for these words in Scripture this morning. But I thank you most for your Son. It's in his name I pray. Amen. You would please stand for the honoring reading of God's holy word. Psalm 13.
How long, O Yahweh? For the choir director, a psalm of David. How long, O Yahweh? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? How long shall I take counsel in my soul, having sorrow in my heart all the day?
How long will my enemy be exalted over me? Look and answer me, O Yahweh my God. Give light to my eyes, lest I sleep the sleep of death. Lest my enemy says I have overcome him, my adversaries rejoice that I am shaken.
Verse 5. But I have trusted in your loving kindness. My heart shall rejoice in your salvation. I will sing to Yahweh, because he has dealt bountifully with me. This is God's word. Please be seated. First, as we come to this psalm this morning, we must establish some context for ourselves so that we might best understand exactly what the Scriptures are communicating to us.
Well, first, who is this psalm written by? It tells us here plainly in our Scriptures this is a psalm of David. Now, who is this psalm ascribed to? And it says, for the choir director. Now, some translations use chief musician in place of choir director.
And I think that's all fine there. But many commentators are split on who exactly this is. Some say that it could be like Haman or Asaph, both chief musicians in the nation of Israel. They're mentioned in 1 Chronicles as being those lead musicians or those lead choir members.
But other scholars say that the chief musician is God and God alone. I think either way that you interpret this psalm, the way that you look at this psalm, who it's ascribed to, doesn't necessarily change the way that we are going to open the Scripture up and to look into and to peer and to learn from this.
As these songs would have surely been sang to worship. And the chief and lead musicians of that time, like Haman or Asaph, would be using these to lead worship in the nation of Israel. And we sing the psalms here at Heritage.
And we ascribe these psalms, these songs that we find in Scripture, to God. So both things, I think, can be true here. And it doesn't necessarily change the context or how we would interpret these things or look at these things.
So now we look at, is this an exact date in David's life? Is this coming from a piece that we can better understand what might have been going on in his life so we can better interpret these things? But we have no context immediately here about this.
We don't know when this happened. But David was a man that had lots of affliction in his life. He was a man that had a lot of things hit him in the nose, so to speak. David was a man that had a lot of sorrow in his heart in many different instances and times in his life.
So this is just a general psalmist. We can not ascribe it to any certain time piece or time frame within inside David's life. Some of them believe, some scholars believe that it might have been written during one of David's fleeing from Saul into the wilderness.
But again, that doesn't necessarily change our context or how we interpret it. So I think that's a fine assumption, but I don't think it's necessary here for us this morning. As we've looked at who's written this and who it was written to and maybe the time frame of when it was written, I want us now to go to verses one and two.
For our first point this morning, we see lamenting's despair. Our first point this morning, lamenting's despair. If you look in verse one, look at it in your own Bibles with me. You see, how long, O Yahweh, will you forget me forever?
How long will you hide your face from me? See, David here, he's in utter despair. His lamenting has taken its toll. He's in the throes of his affliction. He's saying, how long are you going to make me wait, God?
How long must I flounder here? How long must I continue in these depths of hellish suffering? How long, God, how long, God, will you forget me? He's saying, have you forgotten me, O God? Have you turned your back on me and left me here to squander?
Have you forgotten your servant? Have you forgotten your child? David here, you can see from his words, he feels abandoned. He states that God is hiding his face from him. This language here is used to sort of describe this absence of communion, this absence of togetherness, or this lack of familiarity.
We see 2 Chronicles chapter 30, verses seven, eight, and nine. Read, for when you return to Yahweh, your brothers and your sons will find compassion before those who led them captive. They will return to this land, for Yahweh your God is gracious and compassionate, and he will not turn his face away from you if you return to him.
This verse gives us a better idea of what David's talking about here. David feels no compassion. He feels no grace from God. God's face is turned away from him. We can even look at Job chapter 33, verse 26, and said, then he will entreat God and he will accept him.
And he will see his face with joyful shouts, and he may restore his righteousness to man. It's this joyfulness that's contained inside of us that when we have communion with God and we see his face, his face is not turned away from us.
David has none of this. David has no joy. He has no joy to shout. We can even look at another psalm, Psalm 67, verse one. It says, God be gracious to us and bless us. He caused his face to shine upon us.
David feels none of this, church. He feels no graciousness. He feels no blessedness. He feels no compassion. He feels no joy. He is devoid of all of these emotions that you and I have felt and have known by knowing God.
He's empty. These references in Scripture just give us this clue of how David's feeling. The blessings of God that David had experienced so much in his life had vanished. It was almost as if he were hopeless, saying this morning, I want to remind you of who David was.
He was a man that chased after God, a man that put his ultimate faith and trust and hope and belief in the almighty God of the Bible. And yet he was so despaired. He felt so forgotten. He felt empty. And in the throes of his affliction, a man that chased after God, that had been smiled upon so much by God and given so much from God, he felt absolutely alone.
See, this isn't something that's typological of David. See, this danger is for you and I as well. This was deeply personal to David. He knew it. He felt it. He understood it as it should be to all Christians.
Beloved, those of you that are in the throes of affliction right now, those of you that feel this, that feel this lack of compassion, that feel this lack of graciousness, that feel this lack of love, that feel this lack of joyfulness, you feel forgotten, you feel abandoned.
You feel as if David does here in these scriptures. How long, O Yahweh? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? David continues. This continuation, he shows his sorrow in himself and in others as well.
Not in just his state of feeling forgotten and feeling sad and being hidden from God's face. If you look in your own Bibles at verse two here, it says, how long shall I take counsel in my soul, having sorrow in my heart all the day?
How long will my enemy be exalted over me? We see here David referencing counsel taking within himself. David had taken his feelings and he had looked inwardly. He looked at his own counsel. He looked at his own circumstances and interpreted them through his own lens.
He had sought his own wisdom. He had thought about his affliction in a flesh-ridden worldly manner. He acquiesced to his own knowledge and his own gut. It's because of this inward gaze that sorrow filled his heart.
It's because of his self-counsel that David was most likely in a very depressed state. This self-counsel hath produced this sorrow. David was devouring rotten thoughts in and of himself and how would he not be sour?
How would he not be sorrowful if he's devouring these rotten thoughts looking inwardly? Children, I want you to find my eyes this morning. Children, you've probably been sad in your life before, right?
And when you've been sad in your life before, why were you sad? Were you sad because you remembered one of God's promises? Were you sad because you remembered in Scripture where it says that Jesus will wipe away every tear from my face?
Did that make you sad? Have you, in that sadness, or did your remembering cause you to be sad that Jesus has prepared a place for us in heaven? Did you read the promises of Scripture and it evokes sadness in you of how great it's going to be for Christians?
Absolutely not. Your sorrow lies within you and your counsel, children. Adults, how often do we forget what we've been told? How often do we forget what's written down for us? How often do we forget to open our eyes and read?
How often do we forget to open our eyes and open our minds and study? How often, when affliction rears its ugly head, do you immediately pick up Scripture? I pray that's true. Some of you saints might immediately run to your Bibles and your prayer closets, but do you keep running to them?
Do you keep running to them every day, every hour, every moment that affliction is staring you in the face that you have to deal with? Or do you eventually get tired? Do you get tired of reading that mercies will be new every morning?
Do you get tired of reading about the salvation that you have? Do you get tired about reading how wonderful Jesus is? Let it not be said of us, heritage. David, in these first two verses, asked how long four different times.
We have no idea, we have no textual referencing to know when the psalm was written, like we talked about at the outset of the sermon, or to what affliction or depression that David might've been dealing with at the time.
But one thing I want you to think about, saints, is that how often in our affliction does a week feel like a year, and a year feel like a lifetime? Charles Spurgeon, and I believe in his treasury of David, said, a week inside a penitentiary far outlasts a year of joys.
It is so true. When we are hit hard and hit over and over and over again, it feels like a lifetime. It feels like it's been forever since we've had a reprieve, since we've had a breath. Saints, in light of David's questioning, how long?
How long has it been for you? Has it been days, weeks, years, a lifetime? I want you to hear Samuel Rutherford's words. I know that as night and shadows are good for flowers, and moonlight and dews are better than a continual sun, so is Christ's absence of special use.
So is Christ's absence of special use, and that it have some nourishing virtue in it, and give us sap to humility, and put us an edge on hunger, and furnish us a fair field to faith to put forth itself, and to exercise its fingers, and gripping it, seeth not what.
Samuel Rutherford here says, I know it is good for this absence, that it creates more faith in me. It creates more humility in me. It creates more hunger for God. It creates more desire for his word. I know that it is good, but oh, that it is hard.
And oh, how long it feels. David finishes the second verse by saying, how long will my enemy be exalted over me? This is referencing most likely that those that stole or tried to steal the throne from David.
David knows that he's God's man. David knows very well that he's God's man. He's supposed to be ruling and presiding over a nation, leading a people unto godliness. David knows this in his heart of hearts.
David's faith in God's justice would have been shaken at the thought of those that don't obey God and don't love God would be remembered by God more than he would. And they would see God's face more than he would.
That their counsel would be of God and his would be of his own gut. His worry stems from maybe some anxiety or his anxiousness or worrying about his kingship being destroyed or taken and not from a selfish standpoint, not from a prideful standpoint, because God entrusted his people to him.
Saint, the first two verses of this Psalm encapsulate David's plight in his own self, his own counsel, his own forgetfulness of God's promises. So you see, saints, as we get through this Psalm a little bit farther, you're gonna start understanding and you're gonna start seeing that David here was the one who forgot, not God.
He's hurting, he's discouraged, he's sad, he's frustrated, he's all these emotions, he's all of these feelings that you felt too. But saints, the point of these verses are not what David does in his wallowing.
Hear me say that again. The point of these two verses are not what David does in his wallowing, but what it points him to, what it reminds him of, what in his stupor he comes back to. Christian, I know that many of you in today in this room may be even feeling this affliction that comes with this Christian life or promised it.
You're going through heartache and trials and you felt and said these same things. How long, God, have you forgotten me? Why have you hid yourself from me? How long do you want me to go on like this? Are you going to allow the unrighteousness to continually be exalted over me?
I love you, I follow your commandments, I know you. Saint, we mustn't stay in this muck. We mustn't live in this mire. We must do what David does next. Look in your own Bibles, look in your own Bibles and see how the transition here comes in verse three.
Our second point this morning is, David has a cry of prayer. He has a cry of prayer. We're going to read verses three and four now. Look and answer me, oh Yahweh, my God. Give light to my eyes, lest I sleep the sleep of death.
Lest my enemy says I have overcome him. And my adversaries rejoice that I am shaken. What is David's response to all this wallowing? It is the one thing so ingrained in him as a Christian to do, he goes to the throne of grace.
The one thing that's so spliced into his Christian DNA, he goes to the throne of grace. He goes to God in prayer. He desperately cries out as he's done so many other times in affliction. He pleads to God to give light to his eyes.
And you might be wondering, what does that mean, pastor? What does that part there mean? Give light to my eyes, lest I sleep the sleep of death. We can look at 1 Samuel 14, verses 27 through 29 to help us understand this a little bit better.
But Jonathan had not heard when his father put the people under a sworn oath. Therefore, he put out the end of the staff that was in his hand and he dipped it into the honeycomb and he put his hand into his mouth and his eyes brightened.
Then one of the people answered, your father strictly put the people under a sworn oath saying, cursed to be the man who eats food today. And the people were weary and Jonathan said, my father has troubled the land.
See now how my eyes have brightened because I tasted a little of this honey. This invigorating, this opening of the eyes, seeing things in a reality that are true and that are right. It's not being so dull in your eyes that cataracts have you glossed over.
We look into Ezra chapter nine, verses seven and eight. Since the days of our fathers to this day, we have been in great guilt. But on account of our iniquities, we, our kings and our priests, have been given to the hand of the kings of the lands, to the sword, to captivity, to the plunder and to open shame as it is this day.
But now for a brief moment, the grace has been shown from Yahweh our God to leave us an escaped remnant and to give us a peg in his holy place that our God may enlighten our eyes and give us a little reviving in our slavery.
It's a reviving of his spirit, it's a reviving of his soul. He's being invigorated, saints. You can think of Job and all of what Job went through and you look at verses like Job chapter 33, verse 30. To bring back his soul from the pit, that he may be enlightened with the light of life.
That he may be enlightened with the light of life. This enlightening of the eyes, it's an invigorating. David's eyes, they were dull, he couldn't see the loving kindness and the long suffering the Lord had, even in his affliction.
He prayed that he would be invigorated so that he could cherish God and see the truth that his own counsel and feelings were hiding. He desires this light so that his enemy would not overtake him. And not in a prideful manner, but David knows again that he's God's man.
And that being God's man, his enemies are God's enemies. He wants God to be glorified, not held in derision. Beloved, you need to pray like David does here. Beloved, you need to pray like David does here.
He's modeled for us a cry of longing so that we can see things in their true reality. To see things with the eyes of life, eternal life, and not the eyes of death. God desires us to pray to him. He is a very present help, especially in our affliction.
Spurgeon in his treasury of David says this. Let the eye of my faith be clear that I may see my God in the dark. Let my eye of watchfulness be wide open lest I be entrapped. And let the eye of my understanding be illuminated to see the right way.
Christian, when we're met with affliction, we need to continually go to the throne of grace so that we may see God in the dark in hopes that he would open our eyes completely just so that we may better sojourn in our time of affliction.
That we would see the right way, the godly way forward in our affliction that we might honor God in it. It's not the direct point of this passage, but this morning I wanted to take just a short moment to remind you about what our scriptures say about affliction.
Psalm 34, 19 says, many are the evils against the righteous, but he always delivers them out of them all. Psalm 119, 71 says, it was good for me that I was afflicted, that I may learn your statutes. Romans 5, 3, and 4 say not only this, but we also boast in our afflictions knowing that affliction brings about perseverance.
Perseverance. And perseverance, proven character. Improving character, hope. Romans 8, 28, and we know that for those who love God, all things work together for good. For those who are called according to his purpose.
Psalm 10, 17, and 18 says, oh Yahweh, you have heard the desire of the humble. You will strengthen their heart. You will cause your ear to give heed, to give justice to the orphan and the oppressed. So that man who is of the earth will no longer cause terror.
Saint, this morning I'm here to tell you some of these promises that David remembered. So that his eyes might be enlightened. Saints, you will be delivered just as David knew he would be. Beloved, affliction helps us learn scripture better.
So that you may learn God's laws and commandments to love them and obey them. David knew that too. Believer, your affliction produces spiritual growth in you. Oh, how David knew that one so well. Redeemed, affliction is for your good.
Christian, you are strengthened in your affliction. All of these verses, all of these truths sprinkled out throughout the canon of scripture point to what David is praying for. That he might have a clear eye of faith.
We now come to verses five and six. It's the second transition in this psalm. We see David's sorrow. Then we see David's cry and prayer. And next, what do we see? Look at it in your own Bibles. We see a song of faith.
We see a song of faith. Verses five and six. But I have trusted in your loving kindness. My heart shall rejoice in your salvation. I will sing to Yahweh because he has dealt bountifully with me. We've got to witness this monumental shift in David's heart posture.
He began this psalm wailing in lament for how long he'd been forgotten and left unto himself. It drove him to prayer. In that prayer, he asked for his eyes to be enlightened so that he would stop believing the lies and start seeing the truth.
The enlightenment clearly granted by Yahweh now has sent him headlong into praise. David's eye of his faith is centered. But what's it centered on, Saint? Look at the song in your own Bible. Look at this song.
What is David's eye centered on? Well, it's absolutely the gospel. All the promises that David knew, dear to him, that God has said to him. He brings forth his salvation for it's the greatest promise and blessing to be had.
David trusts God's loving kindness. He rejoiced in God's salvation. His tears of sorrow have turned into songs of joy. All of this because he's now been given the correct disposition to see the bounty that has been given to him, the ultimate grace.
And Saint, we still have this same ultimate grace for you and I to have today. We have the cross of Christ that can bury any affliction. It can afford any hurt. It can recompense to the uttermost. Derek Kidner, in his commentary on this particular psalm, states, the psalmist entrusts himself to this pledged love and turns his attention not to the quality of his faith, but to its object and to its outcome, which he has every intention of enjoying.
If David was looking inward when he gets to verse five, he would say, oh, how I have failed trusting in you. Oh, how I have failed in loving you. Oh, how I have failed God in knowing what your word says, but he doesn't.
He doesn't go to his faith and how good it is. He goes to the object. He goes to the fountain. He goes to the source and its outcome. Which is his salvation. David doesn't rely on his faith to pull himself up by its bootstraps.
No, that's not what he does here. The point of view shift we see in this language reflects David's heart of worship. Nowhere in the last two verses does it say or allude to David's affliction ending. Pay attention to that part.
Nowhere does it say in verses five or six that because I am now reprieved, oh God, because you have taken this away from me, oh God, because you have stilled the waters, oh God. It's not there. Now it may have very well ended, we don't know.
But that's not the point here either. The point is, the point is church, that no matter how much or how long we suffer, we must do what? We must trust. We must rejoice. And we must sing. No matter how long the affliction stays at the door, we must trust, we must rejoice, and we must sing.
Saints, that is what has been laid before us in this life. You are going to meet affliction for the rest of the time that you're on this earth. But the day that you meet King Jesus, it is gone. And until that day, we must work hard, we must worship, and we must pray, we must sing, we must trust, we must know the God of the Bible has loving kindness for us, saints.
We must know this in our hearts. If you neglect this truth, saints, you are going to wallow all day long, like David did in verses one and two. You're gonna wallow all day long. That's not what God has for you.
That's not what God has and has instructed and commanded His saints to do. He's commanded us to trust, to sing, and rejoice. And how do we get to do those things, saints? How do we get to trust God? How do we get to rejoice?
How do we get to sing? It tells us in the last line of this psalm, because we've been dealt bountifully with. Now, before I get to the uses of this particular psalm, I want now to talk to the unregenerate in the room.
I've yet to address you on purpose. I've yet to address you yet on purpose, because I think it's important for saints to know what's laid in front of them. I think it's important for you to know what's to be laid in front of saints.
Unregenerate, you will never truly rejoice, nor will you sing to God, at least not in an honest manner, nor will you trust Him or truly know His loving kindness, because He has not dealt bountifully to you, at least not yet.
You that are yet in Christ, especially those that are in affliction, those of you that are hurting, you're tired, you're frustrated, you're all of these feelings that we've looked at already this morning.
Those feelings will rule you until you will be ruled by your creator. Those feelings will rule you until you will be ruled by your creator. These afflictions, unregenerate, are as close as you're ever going to get to heaven.
They're as close as you're ever going to get. You may have a slight reprieve here and there. You may be able to come up for air in between affliction meeting you, unregenerate, but there is a day and time when judgment is coming, and for eternity, you will be afflicted where there is gnashing of teeth in the absence of God.
That is what is laid before you. And I don't want you to run to the cross just because you don't want affliction anymore either. I've alluded to it this morning in a sermon as well, but just because you are Christ's doesn't mean your affliction's going to leave you.
In fact, Christians are promised affliction. We're promised hard lives. We're promised death in this world. We're promised poor health. We're promised all of these things that you can think about when it comes to affliction.
We're promised those, Christian, because there are many of these afflictions given. They get sweeter as you grow to know Him more. And at the day of judgment, when you're standing in front of Greek King Jesus, and you're in Christ, you'll never know affliction again.
You'll never know it again. You'll never hurt. You'll never wallow. You'll never feel forgotten. You won't ever feel like God's face is hidden from you because you will be in the presence of it immediately.
If you were here this morning and you've yet to bow your knee to King Jesus, and this psalm has pricked you, you must only repent and believe so that one day, too, you may sing a song of faith, much like David.
I have five uses for the sermon this morning. Use one. Use this text as a proof to see where you are spiritually, saints. Use this text to see where you are. Are you wallowing? Are you praying? Are you rejoicing?
Where are you at in this, saints? Secondly, look to David's prayer and apply that prayer to your own life. Pray as he does in the midst of affliction so that you might desire enlightened eyes to the truths of Scripture.
Use three. Notice how the praise and worship of God is promised without a promised blessing or relief of affliction. Notice this, saints. Notice that we are not promised a relief. Do you praise God in the midst of your affliction anyway?
You should in the fact that you are commanded to. Repent of that and rectify that in your life today if this is you. Use four. Use this exhortation to shift your thinking and your overall thankfulness towards your creator.
Saints, you have been dealt bountifully with. And use five. If you are being afflicted, if you've experienced affliction in this life, and maybe you're in the throes of it right now, sing, sing. Sing to Yahweh.
Open your mouth and fill your lungs full. Because your creator has told you to and he has blessed you and he is deserving of all honor and glory. Amen. Let's bow our heads together, saints.
